5 unprecedented moments from an unprecedented 2024 election

Over the past 15 months, I zigzagged the country, covering a truly unprecedented presidential election.

I’m often asked: What was covering the presidential race like?

My frequent response: Which one of them?

The election was so unpredictable, so eventful, that it felt like multiple presidential races wrapped into one. There was the Republican primary, where Donald Trump was largely absent, allowing his challengers — Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy — to fight among themselves. There were the Biden-Trump months, where most Americans expressed discontent with their options. And there was the final Harris-Trump showdown, a three-monthlong sprint until Election Day.

There was much about the election that was unique, strange and unforeseeable. There was also much that was truly unlike anything we’d seen before. Here are five of those moments.

Trump’s conviction

On May 30, Trump became the first U.S. president ever convicted on criminal charges.

The charges dealt with Trump falsifying business records while paying hush money to a porn star with whom he had an affair. A New York jury found him guilty on all 34 criminal counts.

Trump quickly denounced the verdict as the result of a “rigged, disgraceful trial” and a “witch hunt,” sentiments that many of his supporters agreed with.

In the end, though, the trial had little negative effect on Trump. Early predictions that Trump’s legal problems would weigh him down in polls or turn away moderate voters never came to fruition. In fact, the string of national polls in the weeks following the conviction showed a pro-Trump bump over President Joe Biden — one that Trump never relinquished.

Biden’s debate fiasco

There were concerns about Biden’s age and competence long before he took the debate stage in Atlanta. Weeks earlier, The Wall Street Journal published a detailed report of the concerns that congresspeople and others close to the president had expressed about his fitness. The president’s allies dismissed it as a “hit piece.”

Three weeks later, Biden did little to assuage the concerns. He often appeared confused at the June 27 debate, stumbling through raspy, incoherent ramblings. In the post-debate spin room, Trump’s allies lauded their candidate’s performance as “dominant”; Biden’s surrogates hardly made an appearance. They seemed to know his campaign was doomed long before he did: No Democrat stayed in the post-debate spin room for more than 15 minutes. In a single-file line, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, they shuffled in, offered brief defenses of the president, and filed out.

The debate challenged the adage that presidential debates don’t matter. It was the single event that led to Biden facing pressure to leave the race from party leaders and eventually ditching his campaign — another unprecedented moment.

Trump’s brush with death

For weeks, Biden’s debate debacle — and the subsequent Democratic fallout — commandeered the news cycle. On July 13, though, Trump narrowly survived an attempt on his life, when a would-be assassin fired shots at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

U.S. Secret Service agents neutralized the threat and rushed Trump offstage. Trump pumped his fist and yelled, “Fight!”

One rally attendee, Corey Comperatore, was killed.

It was the first time shots were fired at a U.S. president or presidential candidate since 1981, when an assassin attempted to kill then-President Ronald Reagan.

Two days after the Butler rally, Trump received a hero’s welcome at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where attendees were met with heightened security. Throughout the week, the conversation switched from policy to theology, as conventiongoers debated if, and how, God spared Trump’s life.

A second attempted assassination of Trump unfolded in September, when Secret Service agents intercepted a man with an assault weapon at a Florida golf course where Trump was playing.

Biden exits, Harris rises

On July 21, Biden abruptly announced he’d abandon his reelection effort in a letter posted to social media.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden wrote. “And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

In a second post, Biden expressed his support for the candidacy of his vice president, Kamala Harris.

The subsequent hours demonstrated an incredible effort to coalesce support behind Harris. On Sunday afternoon, Democrats said they were “disappointed” and “in shock” by Biden’s decision, and many were noncommittal about backing Harris. By Sunday evening, state parties across the country had formally endorsed Harris.

Within days, Harris secured a majority of Democratic delegates, making her the party’s presumptive nominee. And at a raucous Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, Harris formally accepted the party nomination.

The billionaire arrives

Elon Musk, widely regarded as the richest man in the world, was the election’s largest individual donor, pouring more than a quarter of a billion dollars to boost Trump and other Republican candidates in November’s election.

Musk’s foray into the presidential race came in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the same place where Trump survived the first assassination attempt. Musk delivered a short speech at Trump’s second rally there, reiterating his support for Trump and his intention to boost GOP turnout in Pennsylvania and other swing states.

Musk poured $239 million to his own organization, America PAC, which led voter-turnout operations in battleground states, states that Trump eventually carried to victory.

Musk’s influence will likely stretch far beyond the election. He has assisted the Trump transition efforts and led a rebellion against the House spending bill that salvaged a government shutdown last week. He will help lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” an initiative to slash the size of the federal government. His influence has been so vast that some Democrats have called him the “shadow president” — leading Trump to outrightly declare that Musk is “not taking the presidency.”